


ain't it warming you (the world goin' up in flames)

by leetleblue



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Almost Kiss, Body Horror, Daydreaming, F/M, Holding Hands, I continue to indulge only myself, Scars, but its slight, forearms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 08:03:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20888822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leetleblue/pseuds/leetleblue
Summary: They’re nice arms—nothing like Fjord’s, of course, even if Jester finds herself getting distracted by Caleb’s arms more and more lately. Caleb doesn’t have the same muscle that other members of the Mighty Nein have, but there’s something distinctly pretty about his arms, anyway. Something about his delicate wrists and long fingers.Jester gets distracted.





	ain't it warming you (the world goin' up in flames)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm late, but: Fictober Day 2, prompt: "I could really eat something." Title from Hozier.  
This one isn't fully beta-read! All mistakes are, therefore, on me.

Caleb doesn’t hide his arms the way he used to. He stopped wearing the wraps a while ago, of course, but he’s got his shirtsleeves pushed up, letting Jester _really _see his forearms. They’re nice arms—nothing like _Fjord’s_, of course, even if Jester finds herself getting distracted by Caleb’s arms more and more lately. Caleb doesn’t have the same muscle that other members of the Mighty Nein have, but there’s something distinctly pretty about his arms, anyway. Something about his delicate wrists and long fingers. Did Caleb ever play the piano? Jester can’t remember if he’s ever talked about playing instruments, but she bets his hands would look beautiful while he played. The Traveler would probably like that picture, if she drew it, the black tips of Caleb’s fingers splayed out over ivory keys but _no, _Jester snaps herself out of her thoughts_, focus!_

His scars. She’d been looking at his scars, watching them while Caleb slices vegetables to go into Caduceus' soup pot. Caleb keeps glancing up at her, so Jester’s sure he’s noticed her looking, but he hasn’t said anything about it yet. He just keeps chopping, making soft conversation with their firbolg cleric as Caduceus strips herbs from their stems, and Jester keeps kicking her feet and giving Caleb her best disarming smile.

The scars are hardly subtle, anyway. His scars. Jester can’t possibly be blamed for looking at them. They are awful jagged things, dark raised lines on his skin. She wonders if it was just the residuum once embedded there that made the marks stand out so spectacularly, leeching awful color into his forearms. Jester doesn’t know if Caleb scars darkly when left to his own to heal, if he has childhood injuries that match the scar tissue on his arms, but she knows her own body never carries around the memory of her pain for very long.

Jester imagines the residuum sticking out of him, the glass-green crystals and his skin bleeding and broken around them, and has to look away and take several long, deep breaths.

“That’s good, Caleb, thank you,” Caduceus says. Jester looks back to see the cleric giving her a significant look over the cutting board and knife he’s accepting back from Caleb. Jester makes a face at him, sticking her tongue out. If anything, Caduceus’ gentle grin only widens. “Jester, Caleb, could you get some more wood for the fire? I’ve got enough to finish dinner, but not to clean up after.”

“Ja, we can do that,” Caleb says, rising to his feet.

Jester jumps up after him, wiping her suddenly sweaty hands on her skirts. Caduceus must say something else to Caleb about the firewood, but Jester isn’t paying enough attention to catch his words. Caleb’s pushing his shirtsleeves back up, and she watches him do it, and then Jester follows him quietly towards the tree-line.

Jester starts looking for fallen branches, hoping to keep her axes belted to her hip. She’s only been looking for a moment or two, long enough that Jester can still hear the sounds of camp but only vaguely, when she realizes Caleb isn’t following at her side anymore.

Jester turns to look at him, eyebrows raised. He’s just standing, arms crossed, watching her. “Is there something wrong?” 

“Funny, I was just about to ask you the same. Is there something wrong with my arms?” Caleb asks, voice deliberately light. He walks slowly to stand in front of her. “You have not looked away from them all day.”

“There isn’t anything _wrong_ with them, Caleb,” Jester makes a face. “It was just—professional curiosity! Since I had to heal your arms up the other day, after that _fight_, I wanted to make sure they had healed up okay, you know?” _Yeah_, Jester thinks_, that sounds better than ‘I can’t stop thinking about your tragic past, or sometimes how nice your arms are.’_

Caleb frowns. “You have never shied away from asking to check your work before.”

“Yeah, _well_,” Jester casts about for a retort, _anything_ to say, and sighs. She covers her face for a moment with her hands. “I was looking at your scars, okay, I’m _sorry!_ I know probably that is like, _rude,_ since you don’t like to talk about them or anything, but I just—”

“I would hide them, like I used to, if I never wanted any of you to see them,” Caleb says, cutting Jester off. He’s got a soft expression on his face when Jester peeks out at him from between her fingers. He holds his arm out between them, scars on clear display. “Look all you like, blueberry.”

“_Really?”_ Jester lets her fingers fully drop from her face.

“Really.”

Jester reaches for him, hands fluttering over his arm, never quite touching him. What does she even say, now? _Thank you for letting me look at your scars, Caleb? How long was the residuum in your arms? Please tell me everything about how you got them so I can sleep through the night again, because I keep thinking of worse and worse things you might have been through? _She frowns, eyes dragging over his scars again, and forces them back up to his face. No, none of that will work. Caleb will talk when he’s ready to talk, Traveler willing. 

Jester bites her lip, clears her head, and says, in a rush, “Do you ever think about getting rid of the scars? I don’t know how powerful a spell I’d have to use to heal them but I could _try_, you know, if you wanted. I’m a _really_ good cleric.”

Caleb shakes his head. “Nein. I—I do not want this token of my past to disappear. I must remember who I was. _What_ I was.”

She grabs his wrist. She’s not sure why she does it, exactly, but she takes his hand and really looks at it, his blackened fingers, the sparse reddish hair growing on his forearm. She doesn’t at the scars, but at the rest of him. “I don’t think that’s ever going to be something you forget, Caleb, but I don’t. Well. I think you use the remembering to _hurt_ yourself, not to _help_ yourself.” She turns his hand over in hers, examining the lines of his palm. “You deserve better than to hurt all of the time. No matter what you did.”

“I,” Caleb swallows. His fingers curl around hers. “Thank you, blueberry.”

Jester nods, not looking at him, and turns his palm over again. Her curious fingertips trail lightly over the back of his hand. Jester’s skin looks wildly out of place against his, like spilled ink against parchment. She watches gooseflesh erupt across Caleb’s skin.

His breath hitches. Has she been breathing? At some point she stopped breathing. Jester sucks in a breath, too fast, too loud, and glances up at Caleb. His face is so _red_, his blue eyes standing out so bright in contrast to them. Caleb’s hand is still in hers. The air feels _charged,_ somehow.

His eyes dip down a little, looking away from hers, and—oh, _Traveler_, is Caleb looking at her _lips?_ He must be—Jester’s eyes drop to his. The wind has blown his hair around, a few strands sticking to his lips, and she raises a hand. Jester runs her fingers lightly over his cheek to unstick the hair, tucking it back behind his ear. It wont stay behind his ear unless she leaves her fingers there, gently, just behind his jaw, since his hair is so fine and the breeze keeps kicking strands of it around, and that’s what Jester tells herself as she lets her touch linger.

Their eyes meet again, and Caleb’s got this _look_, this softness around his bright blue eyes. Jester licks her lips. She can feel it when he swallows. Caleb leans down a bit, and_ Traveler_ he’s tall, Jester always forgets how_ tall_ he is, and _oh_, she’s pulling him in, isn’t she?

There’s a loud crash, metal on metal—Beau and Fjord, sparring, somewhere _much_ closer than Jester thought they’d be. Jester jumps and snatches her hand away from Caleb’s face as the wizard springs upright.

“I could really eat something,” Jester says, too loud, turning away. Her face is on fire. “Do you think dinner is ready yet?”

Caleb shakes his head. She can just barely see him do it out of the corner of her eye. “Nein, blueberry, I don’t think it is.” He scratches the back of his head, ruffling his hair, very obviously not looking at Jester. “We should go get the firewood.”

But Caleb _doesn’t_ let go of her hand.


End file.
